Your eye is probably drawn to the cobalt blue steel. Follow the curve down, along the upright steel poles, and you may notice it looks vaguely familiar. Those steel poles will become a handrail. Moving metal steps will fill those three gaps, and carry passengers in and out of the depths of London.
These are the innards of an escalator for Crossrail – Europe's largest infrastructure project. This photograph was taken under Tottenham Court Road in Central London, where engineers are busy finishing off ticketing booths, signalling and escalators ready for the expanded station's opening in December 2018.
Formally called the Elizabeth Line, Crossrail cost £14.8bn and, when complete, will comprise of 40 stations. It may look desolate now, but its trains will carry 200 million passengers each year.
To get to this stage, 42 new tunnels were carved out under the city with tunnel boring machines. The expanded Tottenham Court Road station will accommodate 170,000 passengers a day, on 200m long trains which can hold up to 1,500 passengers each.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
